Some online services might be skirting the law to obtain these phone lists, according to Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has called for legislation to criminalize phone record theft and use.
In some cases, telephone company insiders secretly sell customers’ phone-call lists to online brokers, despite strict telephone company rules against such deals, according to Schumer.
And some online brokers have used deception to get the lists from the phone companies, he said.
Daily Archives: January 7, 2006
Congress Hands Caught in the Cookie Jar
Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache:
All House members who use cookies either acknowledge it or have privacy policies that are silent on the topic. Of the 23 senators who pledged not to employ cookies but do anyway, 18 are Republicans and five are Democrats.
“It shows their lack of understanding of technology,” said Sonia Arrison, director of technology studies at the Pacific Research Institute, a nonprofit group in San Francisco. “It’s willful ignorance. They’re complete hypocrites. How can they accuse companies of poor data management when they’re not doing it on their own Web sites?”
No rule prohibits the use of Web monitoring techniques by Congress. But such a restriction does apply to executive branch agencies. The Pentagon and others scrambled this week to eliminate so-called Web bugs and cookies after inquiries from CNET News.com.